Get Visual Studio 2010 to build solutions on a network share in a VMware Fusion virtual machine

By Michael Argentini
Managing Partner, Technology and Design

When working with Visual Studio solutions located on a VMware network share (\vmware-host*), you'll likely run into various security issues. Here are some tips for the most common issue,"failed to start monitoring changes" build error.

Visual Studio's default behavior is to monitor folders in web projects for changes. Because the project folder is on a UNC share, this behavior prevents web projects from building. It can also cause Intellisense to stop working for web page objects. The only solution I have found is to disable this behavior.

32-bit Windows

  1. Open regedit and navigate to HKLM \ Software \ Microsoft \ ASP.NET \
  2. Create a new DWORD value named FCNMode
  3. Set FCNMode to have a decimal value of 1

64-bit Windows

  1. Open regedit
  2. Navigate to HKLM \ Software \ Wow6432Node \ Microsoft \ ASP.NET \
  3. Create a new DWORD value named FCNMode
  4. Set FCNMode to have a decimal value of 1

Article last updated on 4/21/2018

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